yizhivika2006's photostream

Earlier this week, I wandered past this theatre, as I have done on innumerable occasions since this photograph was taken during an autumn evening in 1982.

I've uploaded this particular image as a small act of homage to the (still very much living, I hasten to add) photographer and film-maker Wolf Suschitzky, whose book, 'Photos', I collected a copy of from The Photographers' Gallery in Great Newport Street, a few years ago.

In the book is a section called 'Charing Cross Road', featuring a number of monochrome images taken by Suschitzky in the 1930s, including one of some folk queueing at the Pit Entrance to this self-same Wyndham's Theatre, for a matinee performance in 1934.

Like some of the work by the American photographer Paul Strand (most notably, for me, his iconic image of Wall Street taken in 1915), several of the photographs taken by Suschitzky in the Charing Cross Road in the 1930s, take me effortlessly to places that most other photographs could never get remotely close to transporting me, hence this brief tribute here.

The image above, incidentally, was taken on 35mm colour transparency film, and converted to monochrome in Photoshop Elements, following its digitalisation via a Nikon Coolscan V ED film scanner.

A fortnight after Easter, and winter finally arrives in north London......

Taken with a Sony Cybershot R-1 digital bridge camera at about 8.15 on a Sunday morning.

I can't help but feel a tad nostalgic when I look at this picture, taken as it was in the days when I resided in Marylebone, and when wandering down the Edgware Road was for me a commonplace, at any time of year, and in any weather. A common sight too then, were Routemaster buses, one such here wending its way southeastwards through central London, from Paddington towards Lewisham, beneath rainy skies, splashing its iconic colour and form across an urban landscape.

It's true Routemasters still survive on London's streets (on the so-called heritage No. 9 and No.15 bus routes through the West End), and it's true that nothing lasts forever, but oh, my life, just what were they thinking when they introduced the execrable bendy buses to London's streets, those junction-blocking, fare-dodger-friendly, serpentine monstrosities, on this and ten other routes throughout central London.

I can't quite bring myself to vote for Boris in the forthcoming Mayoral Election in London this spring (I'm congenitally incapable of voting Conservative), but dear Ken, you surely and sorely try the patience of some of us, your natural supporters, with your continuing defence of such ill-conceived and alien forms of public transport on the streets of London.

The original of this photo, by the way, is a 35mm Fujichrome colour slide, digitalised by means of a Nikon film scanner.